August 15, 2010

A Japanese correspondent has alerted me to the strange case of Serkan Anilir. He is a German-born researcher of Turkish descent who was said to be an Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture, Graduate School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo.

He has an impressive biography - but depending on which language you are reading (English, Japanese or Turkish) it is different. He claims to be a Turkish astronaut candidate for NASA, but closer inspection will show that this is his head photoshopped onto the body of Richard Hieb.

He has had "guest professorships" all over the world, according to the list is on the Turkish Wikipedia (translated here). It appears that he gave talks at these schools, but not that he had guest professorships. He is not listed in the official researchers lists for projects he supposedly worked on.

His publication list has a number of anomalies: wrong publisher; long article in a journal that only prints short ones; an examination of a given journal issue shows no article with that name; one publication can be found with the same name and co-author, but not with his name on it.

He also claims to be an Olympic gold medalist in skiing. However, there is no record of this.

Asahi Shinbum, a respected Japanese newspaper, picked this up and reported that they checked his reference that was supposed to be from the Turkish Air Force, but they denied that it was from them.

When things got hot in the Japanese press, an investigation into his dissertation was started. Since it turned out to be more than 40% plagiarized (later reports: 59%) the University of Tokyo revoked his doctorate in March of 2010 (press release in Japanese translated by Google) - the first time in the history of the university that they have done such a thing!

In the aftermath, his talk at TEDxTaipei in Taiwan and other places were mysteriously canceled. It is a shame that they were not open about this. He is no longer listed as a professor at the University of Tokyo. And the university has announced a crackdown on plagiarism.

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SCIENTIST 10 COMMANDMENTS

ARE YOU AN HONEST SCIENTIST?

Truthfulness in science should be an iron law, not
a vague aspiration.:."Anyone who has been a scientist for more than a couple of decades will realize that there has been a progressive and pervasive decline in the honesty of
scientific communications. Yet real science simply must be an arena where truth is the rule; or else the activity simply stops being science and becomes
something else:Zombie science."

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STOP THE NUMBERS GAME

"As a senior researcher, I am saddened to see funding agencies, department heads, deans, and promotion committees encouraging younger researchers to do shallow research. As a reader of what should be serious scientific journals, I am annoyed to see the computer science literature being polluted by more and more papers of less and less scientific value. As one who has often served as an editor or referee, I am offended by discussions that imply that the journal is there to serve the authors rather than the readers. Other readers of scientific journals should be similarly outraged and demand change." >>>

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"Almost every day, the media features news on academic corruption. Plagiarism, bogus degrees, degree mills, accreditation mills, research misconduct, and administrative misbehavior are among the most frequent topics, but academic corruption usually goes unnoticed in the public mainstream; rarely does it make the front page. However, this trend is already changing and academic corruption is captivating the attention of journalists and readers, and sometimes shocking the public.">>>

BARRIER TO THRIVING PLAGIARISM

"Plagiarism is a phenomenon that existed in the past, exists today and will exist in the future. Slovakia with its population of 5.4 million is confronted with theses and dissertation plagiarism like other countries. The rapid growth in the number of higher education institutions and students, the ICT and internet penetration growth plus low copyright and intellectual property rights awareness in our country contributed to the expansion of plagiarism - an unwanted kind of „creativity“. And there was an inherent lack of systemic action, which would be a barrier for its future growth." - Július Kravjar